:
;
;

TOM McEWEN, Editor — HAL GRIFFIN, Associate Editor — RITA WHYTE, Business Manager.

Published weekly by the Tribune Publishing Company Ltd.

Canada and British Commonwealth countries (except Australia), 1 year $3.00, 6 months $1.

Printed by Union Printers Ltd., 550 Powell Street, Vancouver 4, B.C.

at Room 6, 426 Main Street, Vancouver 4, B.C. — MArine 5288
60. Australia, U.S., and all other countries, 1 year $4.00, 6 months $2.50.

Authorized as second class mail, Post Office Department, Ottawa

Labor's goal for 1954:

Ip for wage increases
to meet steadily rising living
costs and a shorter work day to
stem the rising tide of economic
depression and its consequent un-

employment, are already shaping

the pattern for 1954 union con’
tracts in this province.

Many trade unions are also con-
sidering ways and means of provid-
ing greater organized protection to

e growing numbers of unem
ployed in their ranks. It is obvi-
ous that only united effort and
concerted action to fight unem:
ployment can head off a return to
the devastating conditions of the
Hungry Thirties.

But the big monopolists and
other employer groups are busily

pushing their short-sighted ‘‘hold-

theline’’ campaign against wage

increases, and howling to high

heaven that labor in Canada is
“pricing’’ itself out of the market.

A glance at the Yankee-design-
ed policies pursued by the St.
Laurent government and support
ed (with rare exceptions) by
Tory, Social Credit and CCF
groups in parliament, will readily
show who has ‘“‘priced’’ whom out

ESR A

Tom
McEwen

CCORDING to the “experts” .of the
- Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Brit-
_ish Columbia is right down at the bottom
of the “moral” scale of all Canadian
Provinces. In other words, we hold the
highest per capita rating in booze con-
sumption, dope addiction, crime, illegiti-
Macy, and in divorces, juvenile delin-
quency, cirrhosis of the liver, cancer, and
over-all insanity.

In fact, about all one can gather from

is gloomy DBS “expert” picture on
B.C. “morals” is that this rugged pioneer-
ing province of ours is headed straight
for hell. However, despite some impos-
ing figures unleased by DBS on the moral
decay of British Columbians, we think
the picture is overdone in spots.

In booze consumption our score last
year was roughly $66 million, or around
$55 per head. That figure would be quite
imposing were it not for the very high
water content the B.C. Liquor Control
Board: gives our drinks. Regardless of
Statistics, it is highly possible that
chronic alcoholism and drunkenness is
ho worse in B.C. than elsewhere in Can-
ada. However, in computing our “san-
ity” rating it could be that DBS took
into consideration our apparent readi-
“Ress to be mulcted five or six dollars a
quart for thinly diluted Capilano water,
labelled “Scotch Whiskey” or some other
Popular brew. If so, then DBS calcula-
tions on our “sanity” standing could have
considerable validity.

_ The high incidence of dope addiction,
Juvenile delinquency, and children born
out of wedlock is not a geographical

Phenonemon, as implied by DBS “anal- |

ysts,” but a social one stepping directly
from the anti-social manure with which

of our traditional markets and who

is denying whom what opportuni’
ties for developing trade.

A perusal of the profit balance
sheets of these same employers
and monopoly corporations that
are now so concerned about labor
‘pricing’ will make it abundant:
ly clear who is always on the
short end of the pricing deal. And
the fifty-percent “‘salary’’ boosts
voted themselves by members of
parliament this week sets a splen-
did precedent for labor and ex-
plodes the “‘pricing’’ twaddle of
the bosses.

Substantial wage increases for
working men are essential to meet
steadily rising living costs. They
can be paid out of profits without
any consequent squeeze being put
upon the “‘public’’ about whose
rights the monopolists get so con’
cerned whenever their own profits
are at issue. The fight to increase
and extend unemployment insur’
ance benefits is also essential to
meet the needs of thousands of
unemployed Canadian workers
until reemployment is provided.

A shorter working day without
any reduction in take-home pay

“our-way-of-life” is hourly fertilized.
There are very big profits in the drug

business, and while we _ periodically

round up a lot of “pushers” and unfort-

- wnate victims, we carefully avoid round-

ing up the big “respectable” monopolists
at. the top, who operate this vile indus-
try. We make a lot of “indignant” and
pseudo-virtuous noise in the press about
drug addicts — but always stop. short
of pressing the hunt to its source, there-
by avoiding the risk of exposing some
of our “best people.” : :

Our movies, ninety-nine percent Hol-
lywood productions, reek with the glori-
fication of crime, gangsterism, degen-
eracy and sex depravity, and should Hol-
lywood ‘pass up on any morsel of this
capitalist garbage, millions of tons of
Yankee-produced “comics” of sex, crime
and gangster magazines, take up the
slack. :

Without, denying the fact that juvenile
delinquency is a very real problem, and
regardless of DBS statistical “baro-
meters,” the young people of B.C. (and
the adults), considering all the anti-social
muck they are threatened with on every
side, maintain a high standard of mor-
ality despite the existence of these phy-

sical and mental poisons.

The high incidence of cancer, added
to these other “records” ascribed to B.C.
by the DBS, should be presented to the
people of Canada as a damning indict-
ment of government policies, rather than
statistical exhibits of “moral” ‘weak-
nesses.

One half of the taxpayers’ money now.

being spent by the St. Laurent govern-
ment for the purpose of killing people
(labelled “defense”) if put to proper
social use, would not only alter the DBS
“analysis” of B.C.’s “moral” rating, but
would lift all Canada several notches up
the social scale almost overnight.

DBS may have found the correct fig-

ures to juggle with, but it certainly drew
the wrong conclusions when it saw B.C.
ending up as a “frustrated” cipher in its
phoney indices. “
e

“Jt just isn’t done old chap. .- - the
empire you know.” Uppercrust circles

. peoples of the empire.

BEDTIME STORY

is no less important to the work-
ers’ interests.. With Canada’s

‘vast naturals resources and great

industrial potential, to say nothing
of our high technological skill,
the existence of half a million un-
employed—and the number is still

increasing —- makes the shorter
working day now a vital issue in
all union contracts. It is only one
of the ways, but a very important

in Singapore’s British ruling caste were
literally horrified. Malcolm MacDonald,
son of the late J. Ramsay MacDonald
and: British commissioner-general for
Southern Asia, recently committed an
unpardonable faux pas; he attended a
posh dinner and concert affair — coat-
less! .

Britain’s fashion journal for imperial.

- pukka sahibs, the Tailor and Cutter al-

most wept about Malcolm’s disrobing,
terming it a “terrifying precedent” and
one which might ultimately lead to
“nudity among empire dignitaries.”

But worse than that. In these farflung
outposts of empire “the Englishman has
always dressed for dinner in the jungle

. conscious that clothes . . . have be-
come the earmark of civilization . . . and
if we start revealing to the colored races
the usually disappointing details of the

European’s physical condition . . . we.

might also reveal that we are not, after
all, quite so superior as we have man-
aged to lead them to believe.”

A Colonel Blimp in stuffed shirt and
tails with an Order of the Bath draped
around his excess suet .: . or snuffing
out liberty-seeking Malayans with one
of John Foster Dulles’ latest death-deal-
ing gadgets, makes an imposing picture
(at least Blimp thinks so) to the subject
But “coatless,”
and perhaps pantless if the “terrifying
precedent” catches on, there’s no saying
what catastrophe might follow. In the
midst of their many oppressions the peo-
ples of Malaya could even be seized with
a nation-wide epidemic of Rabelaisian
laughter.

From now on Malcolm, old chappie,

keep your coat on. As Tailor and Cutter
so aptly puts it, this old imperial custom
of dressing for dinner in the jungle has
“astonished the natives into a willy-nilly
admiration.” The only hope of prolong-
ing this “astonishment” is to keep fool-
ing the natives that inside a well-padded
“fish and soup” ensemble there strides a
Bond Street “superman.” -
- No wonder Tailor and Cutter is deeply
alarmed. One of those days the formal
dress brigade may be coming home shirt-
less and highly fortunate at that!

yeur
eur”

one, of beating back the threat of
depression and putting an end to
the suicidal and_ short-sighted
policies of the cold war. For now
the working people, who have
always carried the heaviest burden

_are threatened with having to bear

the full brunt of such policies.

Fuller pay envelopes and a
shorter work week must become

labor's goal for 1954.

ET ee

Forty years ago

(From the files of the B.C. Federationist,
February 13, 1914)

Denouncing the Conservative govern-
ment of Premier Sir Richard McBride for
its anti-labor policies and its refusal to
allow an investigation into conditions in
Vancouver Island coal mining areas,
John Place, Social Democratic MLA for
Nanaimo, declared in the legislature:
“Give a special policeman a bottle of
whiskey and a gun, and vou have a man
ready for anything from blackmailing
prostitutes to supporting’ the present
government.”

(The short-lived Social Democratic
party of B.C. was a split-away from the
Socialist party. The split occurred in
1911 and the following year, in the prov-
incial general election, the Social Demo-
cratic party returned the only two So-
cialists elected, Parker Williams in New-
castle and John Place in Nanaimo, both
traditional labor seats.)

Fifteen years ago

(From the files of the People’s Advocate,
February 10, 1939)

Mayor Lyle Telford of Vancouver
greeted some 50 returning B.C. veterans
of the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion at
the CPR station. Of 300-odd men who
went from B.C., nearly 150 were killed
in Spain fighting with the Republican
armies against Franco’s fascist forces.

va

Ten years ago

(From the files of The People,
February 12, 1944)

Affronted by Vancouver City Council's
attitude that “people are glad to pay
high prices for places to live in,” Van-
couver Consumers Council was leading
a campaign to alleviate deplorable hous-
ing conditions.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — FEBRUARY 12, 1954 — PAGE 5